Firstly, we apologise for this post coming quite late – with the university year coming to an end for our undergraduates, and assignments piling up for our masters students, the editorial team has been busy again! However, we still found time to relax with our nose in a book – scroll down to see what we read last month, and see if you agree with our thoughts!
Editor: Rosie
Book: Babel by R.F. Kuang
Genre: Fantasy
Page count: 544
Favourite quote: “History isn’t a premade tapestry that we’ve got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.”
Rating: 3.75/5
Babel follows the unique upbringing of Robin Swift, who was taken from Canton by an Oxford scholar as a child and has been raised to become a talented translator. Set in the mid-1800s and largely based in Oxford, the home of the Royal Institution of Translation, Babel addresses themes of education, magic, and friendship against the backdrop of the British Empire. As the enchantments of Oxford University and Babel begin to fade, Robin becomes stuck between his dedication to his studies and what this means for his colonised homeland.
Babel is a great exploration into the art of translation and offers much insight into the difficulty of the practice, as well as its prestigious reputation. The elements of fantasy were unique and exciting, with translation-powered silver that fuelled the Empire. Despite this strong basis, I found that I did not enjoy this novel as much as expected, perhaps because of the incredibly high expectations I had going into it. Whilst the ideas were intriguing and some of the friendships endearing, many of the characters felt lacking in depth and nuance. I also found the many footnotes, while sometimes useful, to be often unnecessary and disruptive to the flow of the book. Finally, the book’s pacing was inconsistent and felt a little jarring, with the first two-thirds being very slow-moving and the last drastically picking up speed. Overall, the novel was enjoyable, informative, and fairly engaging, but it fell short in certain areas for me.
Editor: Rachel
Book: Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fantasy-comedy, cosy-fantasy precursor
Page count: 332
Favourite Quote: From the blurb: “Witches are not by nature gregarious, and they certainly don’t have leaders. Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn’t have.”
“As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: ‘When shall we three meet again?’
There was a pause.
Finally, another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: ‘Well, I can do next Tuesday.’”
Rating: 4.5/5 (mostly on account of Pratchett’s constant referral to Magrat’s lack of breasts – would have been a 5/5 if this didn’t happen)
Terry Pratchett’s Disc World is the precursor to the first cosy-fantasy books coming out today. Parodies of contemporary fantasy, he takes familiar tales and sets them in a different yet eerily similar world to our own. Wyrd Sisters is the sixth book set in the world and the first in the series following the coven of witches. It is a comedic and amusing retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, with a little from the plot of Hamlet thrown in for good measure.
On a dark and stormy night in the kingdom of Lancre, two random, but soon-to-be intertwined, occurrences are happening. The first is the assassination of the King. The second is the first coven meeting of three witches: Magrat, Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax.
With the assassination ending with King Verence ending up as a ghost, the next thing for Duke and Duchess Felmet to do is to make sure the heir to the throne is seen to. As the witches are figuring out when they will meet again (next Tuesday won’t work for Nanny Ogg, she’s babysitting), the guards fleeing with the baby prince interrupt their meeting.
Through a series of amusing events, the witches hide the crown and the child with a travelling band of actors. Unfortunately, the Felmets don’t care for the land and the land itself wakes up and spurs the witches into action – whether they want it or not.
Pratchett’s narrator voice makes amusing commentary and fantastic footnotes that add to his world-building. This is also where we meet the most formidable character in Disc World – Granny Weatherwax – for the second time. With her are the bawdy Nanny Ogg and Magrat, a young witch getting started in the Craft.
It’s a very amusing book and humorously pokes fun at the assumptions readers make about what “should” happen next in the plot. I would recommend it if you like books like Legends and Lattes or if you enjoy cosy-fantasy.
Editor: Anna
Book: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Genre: Absurdist fiction
Page number: 82
Rating: 5/5
I revisit Kafka’s short stories often, for his ability to pack so much ambition and so many unique elements into his work will always be a huge inspiration to me. I love his ideas and how his brain worked, and I recently acquired a collection of his short stories, some not even a page long. Kafka will always motivate me to write with surrealist elements.
The Metamorphosis is arguably his most famous work, and it tells the story of Gregor Samsa, who awakes one morning as a giant beetle. Instead of addressing the absolute incredibility of this, the story instead takes a turn to addressing Gregor and his family’s stresses in how he will continue going to work and providing income for the family. They slowly abandon him and act toward him in disgust, his sister pitifully leaving him scraps of food by the door. It addresses themes of identity, purpose, and alienation.
While Kafka’s work is totally absurd and stimulating, I feel like The Metamorphosis particularly is a piece that should be studied by all creative writers. Kafka did not shy from his bizarre and interesting ideas, leading his readers in blind. I refer back to his work constantly when I need to be reminded how to embrace innovation, and trust my own imagination.
Editor: Brigitta
Book: A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
Genre: Fantasy
Page count: 864
Favourite quote: “The queen felt strangely calm. She remembered the first time she had lost a tooth, when she was just a little girl. It hadn’t hurt, but the hole in her mouth felt so odd she could not stop touching it with her tongue. Now there is a hole in the world where Father stood, and holes want filling.”
Rating: 3.75/5
A Feast for Crows is the fourth book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. However, this entry in the series is slightly different as it is essentially one half of a much larger book. The ever-growing cast of characters, locations and storylines after A Storm of Swords would have been two large to fit into a single book, so Martin split them up into two books, which both begin directly after the events of A Storm of Swords. A Feast for Crows follows the storylines in and around King’s Landing (the capital of the fantasy continent Westeros), while the following book A Dance of Dragons follows all the storylines outside of this. While this allows Martin to explore these arcs in more detail, it also means a lot of fan-favourite characters are entirely absent from the book.
The new point-of-view characters Martin introduces in their place are a mixed bag. He makes Cersei a point-of-view character, which is a definite highlight. Her chapters feel earned after three long books of seeing Cersei only through other characters’ eyes, and her paranoia and cruelty make these chapters nothing short of unhinged. I was also surprised by how much I enjoyed the chapters centred around the Ironborn; this harsh, seafaring culture is starkly different to many other cultures in the series, and it adds even more richness to the already complex fantasy world Martin has created.
However, many of the other point-of-view characters fall flat. Martin introduces so many new characters that there is simply not enough space for some of them to be fleshed out, and much of the action and narration in these chapters drag. These chapters also take focus away from characters like Sansa and Arya, who have been important point-of-view characters since the beginning of the series, but who both only get a few chapters in A Feast for Crows. This lessens the impact of their series-long arcs, particularly for Arya, whose storyline feels lacking in direction by her last chapter.
I still enjoyed a lot of this book and appreciated its more subtle, character-driven focus after its incredibly intense predecessor. However, it ultimately felt like it was missing something – which is perhaps unavoidable when you split one book into two, 800+ page parts.
Editor: Becca
Book: Never Lie by Freida McFadden
Genre: Psychological thriller
Page count: 320
Favourite quote: “Apparently, asking him to commit murder was a deal breaker.”
Rating: 4/5
My best friend loves Freida McFadden. She loves crime books and thrillers and told me so many good things about this book and her other novels. At first I was apprehensive, put off by the genre which usually makes my skin crawl. But after getting her to read one of my favourite books, it was only fair that I gave it a go. All the chills aside, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I was hooked with this book. The thrilling story follows a young couple who happen to get stranded at a house viewing at the home of a missing woman. After disturbing occurrences, paranoia sets in and it seems that there is more to the house and the characters than meets the eye. Alongside their point of view, we are taken on a journey through the life of the missing psychiatrist before her supposed death, and chapter by chapter you learn more about her mysterious disappearance and the couple trapped at her abandoned home.
I found that this book was very easy to read and after finishing each chapter I just had to know what happened next right away – making it a book I struggled to put down! The best part of this book is by far the plot twist. Unexpected, frightening and downright brilliant – once again making you want to read more and more.
Although it wasn’t my personal first choice of a book, I am glad I gave it a chance and would recommend Freida McFadden’s work to those who love a unnerving plot twist and a psychological crime thriller because it is definitely a must read for this genre!
Editor: Luciana
Book: The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
Genre/category: Greek mythology retelling
Page count: 326
Favourite quote: “Great Achilles. Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles… How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of those things; we called him ‘the butcher’.”
Rating: 4.5/5
Synopsis: (Goodreads) The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, which continues to wage bloody war over a stolen woman—Helen. In the Greek camp, another woman—Briseis—watches and waits for the war’s outcome. She was queen of one of Troy’s neighbouring kingdoms, until Achilles, Greece’s greatest warrior, sacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers. Briseis becomes Achilles’s concubine, a prize of battle, and must adjust quickly in order to survive a radically different life, as one of the many conquered women who serve the Greek army.
When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks. Achilles refuses to fight in protest, and the Greeks begin to lose ground to their Trojan opponents. Keenly observant and coolly unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position, able to observe the two men driving the Greek army in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate not only of Briseis’s people but also of the ancient world at large.
Review: I’ve been a fan of Greek mythology for as long as I can remember. This book retells aspects from The Iliad through the eyes of Briseis, Achilles’s Trojan battle prize. Her telling the story makes you see the war – and the famous, beloved warriors – from a whole new perspective. Her voice is powerful, and it’s one that is not really heard in the original texts so it was completely refreshing reading her feminist view on the events. The conditions of the women during the Trojan War were horrible, they were treated as objects of pleasure and convenience whenever the ‘heroes’ pleased.
The writing style is smart and beautiful, though at some times a tad slow, and the characters are incredibly complex.
I would definitely recommend this book to any Greek mythology fan who already has some knowledge on the Trojan War and its characters.